


And stars in my hands

by dollylux



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Despair, Homelessness, Infidelity, M/M, Running Away, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1777735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Infidelity, despair, run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And stars in my hands

It had been hard and quick and dirty, like it was with Sergio in the beginning when they couldn't get their hands on each other fast enough, when they had to have each other everywhere: in sketchy motels, in gas station bathrooms, in elevators, against his mother's refrigerator on Christmas morning: Sergio's knee over his elbow, the other one wrapped around the small of his back, his own hips working like a porn star's, breathing only from each other's mouths. He had come blindingly hard, shot deep into the condom and bit down on shoulder in front of his mouth and that's when he had realized his mistake. He knows Sergio too well. He had realized it when his teeth sank into unfamiliar flesh, when the sweat and salt that flooded his mouth his mouth tasted foreign, the texture of the skin unknown before that moment. The body pressed to his own means nothing to him, the body encasing his cock just random warmth. When the boy's blue eyes had met his own and he'd kissed him like Iker had saved the world, it had taken everything in him not to throw up in his mouth. He had left very soon after that, condom discarded evidence of his sin in the trash of the bathroom with only one working light next to the mirror, a confused, young boy used and sweaty left in his bed, a boy who will only be the shadow of a face for Iker for the rest of his life, nameless and wrong, just wrong because it wasn't--

It is nearly dawn by the time he makes it to a subway station, by the time he digs change out of his pocket and realizes his hands are shaking and everything between then and when he settles onto an empty bench in a deserted car of the subway train a slow, melted blur. He throws up then, the sound deafening in the plastic box he's seated in, the sickening splash of vomit in an empty room. He opens the door between cars and goes to the next one, wiping his hand on the back of his jacket sleeve. The middle-aged woman in the car with blurred eyeliner and a falling ponytail doesn't even glance up at him.

He had cheated on Sergio.

His Sergio. The Sergio that he has photographs of and with, documenting their love affair from the time they were nineteen and stupid with love, had gotten each other's names tattooed on their hips and had shopped at Ikea for nearly a month before they could decide how to fill their shared apartment in Alphabet City all the way through Iker going to nursing school and Sergio having to work two jobs but they did it, they did it even though they hardly saw each other, even though most of their interactions came from the notes that Sergio scribbled for Iker with the food he left for him in the fridge, from the breakfast that Iker would make before leaving for school in the morning with pancakes or toast cut into the shape of hearts and up until now, six years later when they're both decidedly adults and still struggling but they're happy, they fight sometimes and they fuck a lot and they have a group of friends and they go see concerts and plays and sometimes they make dinner together and sometimes they eat Vietnamese out of styrofoam and sometimes they watch Cheech and Chong movies on the couch with Nando and Pepe and fall asleep in a lazy, boy pile that doesn't stir until dawn. They are Iker and Sergio. In certain circles, those three words are synonymous with forever.

He had cheated on his Sergio.

He looks down and realizes that he's been scratching his arm, both of his arms, his sleeves pushed up and his arms are covered in angry red tracks where his nails have been, trying to rid his skin of the feel of that boy, the smell of him, the knowledge of him. He draws blood that cakes underneath his nails and he jumps up at the next stop, hurrying off the car and through the station and he switches trains, getting on the AirTrain and heading to JFK International Airport. He watches the sun rise from there, lighting up over the sleeping, snow-covered city, shining bright in office building windows and making the whole modern, dirty landscape seem magnificent, ethereal even. He picks a street they pass and mentally navigates it all the way back down into Manhattan, winding street after street until he finds the apartment he shares with Sergio, until he finds him sleeping and curled up cold in their bed. His bleeding arms burn under the wool of his coat.

 

The airport is a haze of what-ifs and what-abouts, such as what-about-Key West, what-about-Sydney, what-about-London. All flights are booked this close to the holidays, and his words dwindle down to what-about-Moscow. Eleven hours later he's stumbling out of an airplane and the air is biting, piercing, a cold like he's never known outside of his own body.

Moscow is a city of rings, of growing circles like ripples from a dropped pebble in still water. He makes his way to its innermost ring and starts wandering. The Russian tongue scrapes over his ears like the numbing wind, like the snow falling but he keeps walking, passing landmarks, convents and arches and staggering architecture, looking like a man who knows where he's going, who is searching for something or someone and is running late. He feels like he's nearly crawling by the time he makes it into one of the cathedrals in the Kremlin, shaking violently from the cold, from his own pain that makes him not feel any of it. He sits down in the back pew and listens to a service in Russian, the whole thing foreign to him, not the familiar Catholicism of his Sergio. He leaves feeling empty and finds a room at a hostel after six tries and collapses into the bed and is only awoken by the cleaning lady the next morning who tells him he missed the check-out time in broken, thickly-accented English.

The next evening finds him in Prague that feels no warmer and he forces himself to eat there, to shovel something down which he promptly throws up in a wastebin outside of the restaurant. He feels stifled here, in this city that is infinitely smaller than Moscow had been, that is overflowing with history and beauty and it's all sharp somehow, all pointed and angles and there isn't any softness, any warmth. He spends two days here, filling his eyes with castles and dancing houses and squares and clocks and bridges and gates and he finds himself at the airport again on Christmas eve, begging to be put on a flight further West, into some warmth, any warmth.

He touches down in Rome which feels indescribably warmer but no softer, a city that is crumbling and re-inventing itself, that makes his bones feel tired, makes him feel as if he's crawling as he explores ruins, all the ones he's read about in books and seen in documentaries with--

He explores Vatican City on Christmas Day, finds the Basilica of St. John Lateran and attends mass, takes communion even though he's an atheist and lights a candle for Sergio. He finds his way into a confession booth and breaks down, sobbing loudly, the sounds echoing through the vast cathedral, his confession spoken between heaves and sobs, not a single word understood by the priest on the other side of the dark wood box. He falls asleep tucked up against one of the massive pillars of the Pantheon, sleeping restlessly for four hours until the cold drives him back to his feet. He finds himself with a phone in his hand and the sound of ringing in his ears and then there's his voice.

"Hello?"

Iker can't speak for a moment, can't even react to the reality of hearing Sergio's voice again. He blinks quickly, tears burning in his eyes but they won't fall. He can hear Sergio's soft breathing, the particular way he's doing so telling Iker that he's worried, nervous, that he he's suspecting against all odds that he knows who is calling from this foreign phone number.

"...Iker?" His voice is so small, trembling even, so worried that Iker swallows, his throat screaming in pain because it's dry, because he's hollowed out, a husk of who he was only five days ago.

"Yeah."

"Ohmygod." There is some rustling and then a decisive sound of settling and the first sob from Sergio's mouth. Iker stares across the square, not looking up at the sky full of the colors of a setting sun. "Iker. Where are you? Where are you? A-are you okay? Where are you?"

"I fucked someone else."

The silence on the other end of the phone is eerie, loaded as a gun. Iker rips into one of his fingernails, tearing it to the quick and then sucking on the bleeding skin.

"What?" It's a whisper, disbelieving, incredulous, intangibly heartbroken. Iker scrapes his bleeding finger over the stone of the wall he's leaning against.

"I fucked someone in Queens. Some boy. I can't come home."

Sergio's panic is rising and there is the sound of a door closing and it's suddenly much quieter than it had been even before and Iker remembers. It's Christmas day. He's with his family.

"You. Y-you. How. How could you do that? How could." His breathing is all that Iker can hear and even though it's the beginning of a breakdown, Iker closes his eyes and is filled with the sound and he feels warmer than he has in longer than he can recall. "What do you mean you can't come home? Where are you? Iker, where the fuck are you?"

"Rome."

"...Rome? Rome, Italy? You're in Rome? It's Christmas day and you've been missing for almost a week and you're in Rome? You slept. You." His sob is sudden and unexpected, so much so that it cuts Iker to the quick, it hits him like a kick in the stomach and he sinks down to his knees on the sidewalk, his eyes closing, curling up against the side of the building and he doesn't even notice the looks he's getting.

"I'm sorry," he says weakly. "I love you. I'm so sorry. J-just forget about me. You will find someone else. You will. You don't need me anymore. I love you." He hangs up the phone after climbing to his feet and he sets off across the square, catches the first cab he can find and he tells the driver to take him to the ocean. An hour later he's wandering along the Tyrrhenian Sea, the sky dark and heavy with clouds and he falls asleep in the sand of an abandoned beach, tears frozen to his skin. He wakes up in the grey of the morning, not a soul in sight and he wonders for a moment if the world has ended and forgotten him, if he was spared and this is the worst punishment possible, to be alone forever, immortal with a heartful of unspeakable memories. He tries in vain to drown himself in the ocean but his body just won't obey, won't stay down long enough, his lungs determined to draw breath, to keep him alive. He walks to Fiumicino proper, soaked through and through, water dripping on the sidewalk behind him, an evaporating trail that traces his steps and he's in yet another airport, on the plane to Málaga.

At last he feels warmth, he hears a language he can understand, the language of his grandparents and of Sergio's family and of his heart, he sleeps on the beach and speaks to strangers and is fed by concerned abuelas and kissed and talked into sleeping on couches with warm blankets and clean clothes and he feels human again, unworthy of being so but human. He seeks out more churches, lighting candles in each, saying prayers in each, but all the prayers are to the gods he met in his dreams in Rome, to Sergio's hands, to the sea that wouldn't take him. A boat takes him across the Gibraltar strait and in half an hour he's in Africa, in Morocco, in Tangier just in time for the sun to set in a show of moody, brilliant colors and he stands on the bay and watches it and thinks of Sergio, that he's tasted each of those colors on his tongue.

Tangier is filled with people of Sergio's coloring, those dark eyes and skin and with ancient history in their features, in their blood. He sinks into the city, hides for six days in it, filled with mint tea and opium where he can find it, blinded by every color available for the eyes of men, he buys a notebook and starts to write in it, writes Sergio letters and letters and occasional, terrible poems and sketches and he mails it off on his last day in Africa, stamps it and sets it free before boarding yet another plane, flying to Puerto Rico and then to Nicaragua then down to Venezuela, all of it driving him back up into Mexico and across the border into Arizona where he rents a car and drives, drives across nine states, the smell of nine countries, thirty-two churches, forty-six days and twenty-thousand, three-hundred and fifty-three miles on his skin before he arrives in Manhattan, a skeleton of who he was when he left. He returns his rental car and walks to Avenue C, his legs shaking, barely holding him up and he stops in front of their apartment building at 5:19 in the morning on February 2nd. He stands there for two hours, watching the cornflower blue curtain of their bedroom window before he walks away, slumping into 7A Cafe where he calls Pepe and eats a bagel with lox and cream cheese and drinks two cups of coffee before Pepe finds him.

He is ushered to the doctor where he learns that he's lost sixteen and a half pounds and has bronchial pneumonia and a broken little toe on his right foot and is severely dehydrated. He's kept overnight and pumped full of fluids and antibiotics and he sleeps the drug-induced sleep of the dead. Pepe takes him home and Nando babies him and monitors him with the vigilant care of a concerned mother, making sure he eats three square a day and drinks only water and that he is sleeping eight hours a night and stays warm and showers and wears socks, all things he wouldn't be doing by himself. He feels better very gradually, his body returning to him but his mind stays quiet, all grey matter and no thoughts, no emotions. Eight days after his return to New York City, he stands up and shuffles over to the window, pushing the curtain back and staring out over a bleak February morning in Manhattan, the snow melted and re-frozen and unspeakably ugly to him. He misses the kasbah in Tangier, the green and blue of the lagoons in Managua, the open roads across the plains states, the exact press and feel of Sergio in his arms at the birth of a day. He hasn't spoken much since he came back, hasn't told the whole story to either of his friends, only tells them bits and pieces and only after he's had more rum than a mortal could handle. He steps out on the balcony and he feels frozen immediately, spoiled as he has been by the heat of Nando and Pepe's apartment but he closes the door behind him and curls up against it, staring out over the tops of the roofs around him. Why? Nando had asked him, Pepe had asked him, he has asked himself for nearly two months. Why did you do it? And why did you leave? He tries to climb the railing, to see how many seconds it would take to fall onto the cars below but his body is too sleep heavy and he can't even lift himself up. He goes back inside and falls asleep on the couch.

He wakes up encased in a warmth he hasn't felt for so long, for fifty-six days and he feels the lifelines on Sergio's palms against the beard on his face, every whisker aware of him, his gaunt cheeks burning under graceful fingertips. He opens his eyes and he finally finds what he's been looking for, what he'd escaped from and run away from and dreamt of and needed, needed more than anything always and needed all along, those eyes. Sergio's eyes. Sergio. Sergio is crying silently, tears spilling down his cheeks, his skin the color of spices in Morocco, his mouth the deepest rose of the sunsets in Mexico, his eyes beyond what anyone can create with their hands in any corner of the world. Iker can only stare at him, unable to breathe.

"I couldn't stay away from you," Sergio trembles, stroking Iker now, petting his beard and his hair and his neck and chest and shoulders, kisses raining down on him like drops of fire, infusing him with life again, healing it. Iker makes a broken sound, a question, his hands sliding up to touch Sergio and their mouths meet, thick and hungry and Iker pulls Sergio around him and on top of him, his arms wrapped around him, begging him to stay right here, not to disappear, not to fade away, please be real. "Come home. I-I don't know what's going to happen or... or what we're going to do, but we have to do it together. I have to have you home."

Iker knows he doesn't deserve it, knows that he will give Sergio every word of his every day that they've been apart, that whatever he had lost on that night that led him to that boy's apartment and into his arms has been found again, that he had run and run and tried to end his life, tried to punish himself for it but he's having to face it anyway, having to face the pain he caused. He nods, words rushing up to his throat but Sergio pets him tenderly, searches his eyes and Iker feels a calm spread through him, a thought entering his mind that hasn't in a long, long time: _we're going to be okay._


End file.
